Praseodymium
- Jan 28, 2023
- 1 min read
by Letitia Jiju
for Goofy
Say they didn’t freeze light. Say the first beam didn’t stumble
out of a frizz of electron, heady as a black pearl on an oyster’s tongue.
Say the lattice didn’t hunger back or long to be strewn shingle
as I, asleep, that whole summer on your shoulder’s flint shore. Did you know
the oyster has a small heart? Like a wounded sock. I stitched mine into muscle. Loved you fitfully.
Sleep bent on my star-jagged dream needled to poem by daylight. A poet tells me matahari
translates to eye of the day. How to define you who I never touched?
Say the praseodymium didn’t hunger back.
That such malleability couldn’t mean,
I want to be touched and touched irrevocably.
Letitia Jiju is an Indian poet who through her work explores the intermingling of mother tongue, religion & generational trauma. Her poems have appeared/are forthcoming in ANMLY, The Lumiere Review, Black Bough Poetry, Moist Poetry Journal, Acropolis Journal and elsewhere. She reads poetry for Psaltery & Lyre. Find her on Instagram/Twitter @eaturlettuce.
